1. Technical Field
The present description relates, in general, to detecting a flame from a burner and, more specifically, to configuring a flame detector by identifying burner and fuel characteristics.
2. Related Art
Various applications use flame detectors (also called “flame scanners”) to ensure proper operation of burners. For instance, blast furnaces, incinerators, industrial oil burners, power generators, and the like use burners, which are fed fuel and provide a flame within a chamber. In case of malfunction a burner may fail to produce a flame even though it is fed fuel, which is typically undesirable. Such applications may include flame detectors to identify whether a burner is providing a flame.
Most applications include multiple burners with one flame detector for each burner. A given flame detector is positioned so as to detect the light produced by its corresponding flame. However, in a system with multiple burners, a particular flame detector may have more than one flame within its line of sight. Thus, modern flame detectors attempt to identify a flame of interest by its features. Specifically, a given flame may be expected to have certain features, such as a flicker frequency that is affected by a frequency of fuel pulses at the burner, and a maximum and minimum intensity during its cycles. Also, a flame typically has a higher frequency closer to the burner nozzle and a lower frequency distal to the nozzle.
A given flame detector “looks” at a particular part of a flame that is expected to have a maximum intensity, minimum intensity, and frequency and compares received light to those flame parameters. Light that matches the parameters may be assumed to be a positive detection of the flame of interest. When no light matches the parameters, it may be assumed that the flame of interest is not being produced by the burner.
In this way, a malfunction at a particular burner can be identified. The flame detector then may output one or more control signals, depending on whether the flame was detected.
Proper use of a flame detector may depend on the ability of technicians to program the flame detector to detect a flame with desired parameters. However, programming a flame detector can often be complicated and difficult.